Mastering Shopify's Best Sellers: Dynamic Collections for Seasonal Success

Hey there, fellow store owners! As experts in helping businesses thrive on Shopify, we at Shopping Cart Mover often delve into the vibrant discussions within the Shopify Community forums. It's a goldmine of innovative ideas and practical solutions shared by merchants just like you. Recently, a thread caught our eye that truly resonated, especially for those navigating the exciting yet challenging waters of seasonal niches or fast-paced fashion trends.

It all began with a fantastic feature request from Nataliya at Loja Style Me, a chic Brazilian fashion boutique. Nataliya eloquently highlighted a common pain point for many Shopify merchants: the platform's built-in "Best Selling" sort for automated collections looks at your store's entire historical sales data. While this is useful for evergreen products, it can be a real headache for businesses with strong seasonality, leading to outdated product promotions and wasted ad spend.

The Challenge: When "Best Selling" Isn't Always Best

Imagine running a swimwear brand. Your best sellers from last summer are fantastic, but come winter, promoting them on Meta Ads or Google Shopping is a surefire way to burn through your marketing budget. Similarly, a fashion retailer like Loja Style Me needs to constantly refresh their collections to reflect current trends and seasons. Relying on an all-time best-seller list means old stock, irrelevant items, and missed opportunities to showcase what's hot right now.

The core issue is that Shopify's native automated collections, while powerful for criteria like price, tags, or inventory levels, fall short when it comes to dynamic, time-sensitive sales performance. Merchants need the flexibility to define "best selling" within a specific timeframe – say, the last 30, 60, or 90 days – to ensure their marketing efforts are hyper-relevant and effective.

The Desired Feature: Dynamic "Best Sellers by Timeframe"

Nataliya’s request was clear and echoed by many: allow merchants to create automated collections sorted by "Best Selling within X days." This native functionality would be a game-changer, enabling stores to:

• Push Hyper-Relevant Products: Directly feed current best-sellers into Meta Ads, Google Shopping, and other marketing channels.
• Optimize Ad Spend: Avoid displaying irrelevant, out-of-season products in dynamic ads.
• Enhance Customer Experience: Present customers with the most popular and timely items.
• Reduce Reliance on Third-Party Apps: Streamline operations and potentially cut costs by having this feature built into Shopify.

While Shopify's product team considers such enhancements, a clever community member, tim_tairli, shared an ingenious workaround that leverages existing Shopify tools: Analytics Reports and Shopify Flow.

The Ingenious Workaround: Shopify Analytics Reports + Shopify Flow

This solution offers a powerful way to create and automatically update dynamic best-seller collections based on specific timeframes. It's a testament to the flexibility of the Shopify ecosystem for those who know how to tap into its deeper functionalities.

Step 1: Extracting Data with Shopify Analytics Reports

The first step involves using Shopify's robust Analytics Reports to identify your best-selling products within a defined period. You can craft a custom report query to fetch exactly what you need. Here’s the example query shared in the forum:

FROM sales
  SHOW product_id, net_items_sold, gross_sales
  WHERE product_title IS NOT NULL
  GROUP BY product_title, product_id WITH TOTALS
  SINCE startOfDay(-30d) UNTIL today
  ORDER BY net_items_sold, gross_sales DESC
  LIMIT 20

• FROM sales: Specifies that we are querying the sales data.
• SHOW product_id, net_items_sold, gross_sales: Selects the product ID, the number of items sold, and the total sales revenue for each product.
• WHERE product_title IS NOT NULL: Ensures only products with titles are included.
• GROUP BY product_title, product_id WITH TOTALS: Groups the results by product, providing aggregated totals.
• SINCE startOfDay(-30d) UNTIL today: This is the crucial part! It filters sales data to only include transactions from the last 30 days, starting from the beginning of 30 days ago until today. You can easily adjust -30d to -60d or -90d to match your desired timeframe.
• ORDER BY net_items_sold, gross_sales DESC: Sorts the results first by the number of items sold (most to least), and then by gross sales (most to least) for tie-breaking.
• LIMIT 20: Restricts the output to the top 20 best-selling products. You can adjust this number based on your collection size.

This report will give you a list of your top products for the specified period.

Step 2: Automating with Shopify Flow

Once you have your report, Shopify Flow comes into play. Shopify Flow is a powerful automation tool that allows you to create workflows based on events and conditions in your store. While it doesn't directly run SQL queries, it can fetch results from *certain types* of reports and use that data to trigger actions.

The workaround involves setting up a Flow that:

1. Triggers Daily: Set the Flow to run once a day (or as frequently as you need).
2. Fetches Report Data: The Flow is configured to read the results of the custom Analytics Report you created.
3. Updates a Collection: Based on the product IDs retrieved from the report, the Flow will then add these products to a designated collection and remove any products that are no longer in the top list.

This means your "Best Sellers (Last 30 Days)" collection will automatically update every day, ensuring it always reflects the most current trends in your store.

Why Dynamic Collections Matter for Your Business

Implementing dynamic, time-based collections has a profound impact on several facets of your e-commerce business:

• Marketing Efficiency: Your ads will always feature products that are currently popular, increasing click-through rates, conversions, and ultimately, ROI. This is especially critical for platforms like Meta Ads and Google Shopping where dynamic product ads are highly effective when fed relevant data.
• Improved Customer Experience: Shoppers landing on your site will immediately see what's trending, making their browsing experience more engaging and relevant.
• Better Inventory Management: By closely monitoring recent best-sellers, you gain valuable insights into demand, helping you make smarter decisions about restocking and promotions.
• Competitive Advantage: Stay agile and responsive to market changes, keeping your offerings fresh and appealing.

For those looking to optimize their Shopify experience, or even considering starting their own e-commerce journey on Shopify, understanding these advanced functionalities is key to unlocking the platform's full potential.

Beyond Best Sellers: Unleashing Shopify Flow's Potential

The principle demonstrated here – using reports and Flow to automate collection updates – can be extended far beyond just best sellers. Imagine collections for:

• Fastest-Growing Products: Items that have seen a significant sales spike recently.
• Slow-Moving Inventory: Products that haven't sold in a while, perfect for targeted promotions.
• New Arrivals with Early Traction: Highlight new items quickly gaining popularity.

The possibilities are vast, allowing you to create a highly responsive and automated merchandising strategy.

Conclusion

While a native "Best Selling within X days" feature would simplify things for many merchants, the combination of Shopify Analytics Reports and Shopify Flow provides a powerful, albeit slightly more technical, solution. It empowers seasonal businesses and fashion retailers to maintain highly relevant product collections, optimize their marketing spend, and enhance the overall customer experience.

At Shopping Cart Mover, we believe in empowering merchants with the knowledge to make their Shopify stores as efficient and profitable as possible. Exploring and implementing such advanced strategies can truly elevate your e-commerce game. Keep an eye on the Shopify Community for more brilliant insights, and don't hesitate to dive into these tools to customize your store's performance!